Seat of the week: Franklin

With Saturday’s election in the corresponding state upper house seat of Huon fresh in the mind, Seat of the Week takes a visit to the Tasmanian seat of Franklin.

Red and blue numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Labor and Liberal. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

The only seat left standing for Labor in Tasmania after a 9.4% statewide swing at the last election, Franklin covers the Hobart suburbs on the eastern bank of the Derwent River together with Kingston on the city’s southern fringe, small towns further to the south, and the unpopulated southern part of the World Heritage area in Tasmania’s south-west. The remainder of Hobart, including the city centre and the suburbs on the river’s western bank, constitutes the electorate of Denison. As one of Tasmania’s constitutionally mandated five House of Representatives seats, Franklin has an enrolment of roughly three-quarters the national average and an uninterrupted history going back to the state’s division into single-member electorates in 1903.

Labor first won Franklin at a by-election held two months after the election of Jim Scullin’s government in 1929, then lost it again amid the party’s debacle of 1931. The seat subsequently changed hands in 1934, 1946, 1969 and 1975, before remaining in Liberal hands throughout the Fraser years and the first 10 years of the Hawke-Keating government. Labor finally won the seat when colourful Liberal member Bruce Goodluck retired at the 1993 election, which together a strong statewide result for Labor delivered a decisive 9.5% swing to Harry Quick. Quick maintained the seat with only mild swings either way at subsequent elections, although there were occasional suggestions he might be brought undone by internal party machinations. When his preselection appeared threatened ahead of the 2004 election, Quick was able to secure his position partly by indicating that he might run as an independent.

After choosing his own time of departure at the 2007 election, Quick sought to keep the seat out of factional hands by promoting his staffer Roger Joseph as his successor. This was thwarted when a deal assigned Franklin to Kevin Harkins, state secretary of the Left faction Electrical Trades Union, and Bass to the Right-backed Steve Reissig. Objecting that Harkins was a “right thuggish bastard” who would lose the seat, Quick declared that he planned to vote for the Greens. His attacks drew blood as newly anointed Labor leader Kevin Rudd sought to distance the party from unsavoury union associations, with Harkins carrying baggage from the 2003 Cole royal commission into the building and construction industry. Harkins’ position ultimately became untenable in July 2007 when the Australian Building and Construction Commission brought charges against him over an illegal strike. When he won preselection for the Senate ahead of the 2010 election, he was again rolled by the intervention of Kevin Rudd.

With Harkins out of the picture and the election looming, the preselection was referred to the party’s national executive, which maintained the factional balance by choosing the Left’s Julie Collins, the state party secretary and a strongly performing though unsuccessful candidate at the March 2006 state election. The loss of Quick’s personal vote combined with the manner of his departure resulted in Collins suffering a 3.1% swing, one of only four swings to the Coalition at that election. Coming off a suppressed base, she went on to enjoy a 6.8% swing at the 2010 election, the highest recorded by a Labor candidate anywhere in the country. She then emerged Labor’s only lower house survivor in the face of a swing that unseated sitting members in Bass, Braddon and Lyons, her margin reduced to 5.1% by a 5.7% swing to the Liberals that was 3.7% below the statewide result.

Collins was made a parliamentary secretary after the election, and progressed to the outer ministry as Community Services Minister in December 2011. After backing Kevin Rudd’s successful leadership bid in late June she was promoted to cabinet, adding housing and homelessness, the status of women and indigenous employment to her existing area of responsibility. Since the election defeat she has held the shadow portfolios of regional development, local government and employment services.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

904 comments on “Seat of the week: Franklin”

Comments Page 9 of 19
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  1. Deblonay

    Ahem.

    The people who looted Greece were the Greeks.

    Corruption large and small was pervasive, endemic and systemic.

    The Greeks had a retirement age of 53 (70?) and didn’t bother paying taxes.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_and_corruption_in_Greece

    Oodles of Greeks were on the public tit – including lots of defunct people for whom relatives continued to collect pensions of one sort or another. We’re not talking about isolated incidents here:

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/greece-benefits-idUSL6E8FP4R320120425

    Feather bedding was extensive. In 2011, one in four Greeks was working for the Government.

    The Greeks used up their soils, forests, minerals and fisheries. That is to say, their environment was run on the same basis as their public finances: use up now, and pay later when she’ll all be fukt.

    It was all on tick with lots and lots of borrowed money. Their gross debt as a percentage of GDP was heading well north of 175%.

    Naturally all this cheating had to be covered up. Their national books were a comprehensive set of systematic lies.

    Payback time, and the Greeks got lots more free money – again from people who had saved it rather than pissing it away on the good life.

    Comes payback time, and cue Deblonay and the International Socialist Collective to whip out the violins about how hard done by the Greeks are.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_and_corruption_in_Greece

    And now Deb and his mates are trying to make us feel sorry for the Ukraine because it is being treated the same way as the Greeks were treated.

    Deb and his mates can go and get fakilaki’d as far as I am concerned.

  2. Tony Abbott this afternoon
    ” I will be able to look you in the eye on Tuesday night & on Wednesday morning and say to you I AM A BLOODY LIAR “

  3. AT

    [If indeed he was discussing Boko Haram without mentioning the fact they’re a Muslim organisation, I would agree that’s a glaring omission, one that needs to be referenced to fully explain their motivations in kidnapping girls who dare to get an education.]

    I work with a number of avowing Muslims. They are scandalised by the activities of Boko Haram. They certainly don’t accept that they are Muslims, and are dreadfully upset that their religion is being smeared in this way. So too are a number of parents of Muslim girls, one of whom did the equivalent of a ‘burn in hell’ imprecation about them.

    It’s quite likely that a number of the kidnapped girls are from Muslim families.

    Anyone can claim to be a Muslim but even if they are, it doesn’t follow that crimes they commit are professions of their faith. Taking ethics out of a religious context, a person may well believe that a crime they commit is done in pursuit of the interests of the nation or justice or some other righteous cause, without anyone else needing to accept that.

    Given that mass media and nuance are not best friends, I can well understand Waleed Aly passing lightly over this, assuming this is what he has done.

  6. MB

    [People like Fran so often seem to overlook the Jewish communities commitment to finance and commerce thus to say capitalist = Nazism is an insult to the Jewish comm unity even though i suspect none is intended.]

    You should have awaited my following post. I don’t make the claim you suggest.

  9. So did the Liberal Party pay to hire the Ministerial briefing room to launch a political booklet printed & authorised by the Liberal Party?

  11. [407
    mari
    Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at 5:09 pm | PERMALINK
    Thanks Bemused

    You understood what I was saying then? I have a bit of difficulty as have been out of IT for too long
    ]
    Yes, I got your drift.

  12. Broko Haram claims some sort of fundamentalist islamic purity. Nothing wrong with mentioning that… provided that what is also mentioned is:

    (1) It is basically a revolutionary outfit fighting against a state that is run by muslims

    (2) That it kills members of the islamic estblishment.

    But I guess this sort of nuance might be beyond the muslim haters who infest shock jock land. And their listeners.

  17. Boerwar

    no apologies for your desporable statements re the Odessa massacre ???
    _______________________________
    Some days ago you suggested that the fire on the Odessa Union hall may have been started by those inside

    ALL Evidence now ACCEPTED even by thePM of coup regime in Kiev makes it clear that the fire was the work of Pravy Sector…the nee-fascist”Svobada” party group who fire- bombed all exits
    yet at the time you seemed happy with the claim which blamed the ethnic Russians I was shocked at that

  18. Boko Harum are nutcase Muslims who want to drag civilisation back to the good old days of Islamic totalitarian theocracy.

    There are nut cases in all religions but I’m guessing Muslims have more than their fair share and they certainly get more support from government.

  20. deblonay

    Ignoring the problem with your Greek story bullshit, are we?

    I pointed out that at that time the causes of the Odessa massacre was contested. Nothing wrong with that. It was contested.

    That this is now not contested I am happy to acknowledge.

    The pravda will out, some of the time.

    A bit like your mates’ Katyn story, isn’t it?

  21. I’m going to cop a lot of flack for what I’m about to say.

    A grab of Rabbott confidently stating Labor’s financial mess.

    Then a grab of Shorten!

    Honestly, Shorten almost had me in tears.

    One would have thought he would drive a stake through the budget emergency lie which is the basis of all the Coalition’s proposals.

    Shorten was flat and unconvincing!

  22. [Boko Harum are nutcase Muslims who want to drag civilisation back to the good old days of Islamic totalitarian theocracy.]
    Yes, but you have to admit whiter shade of pale is a great song.

  24. SO

    We skipped the light fandango
    turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
    I was feeling kinda seasick
    but the crowd called out for more
    The room was humming harder
    as the ceiling flew away
    When we called out for another drink
    the waiter brought a tray

    Beautiful song.

  25. [One would have thought he would drive a stake through the budget emergency lie which is the basis of all the Coalition’s proposals.]
    Yeah Clive Palmer is doing a better job of dispelling this myth than Shorten at the moment. That needs to change.
    [CLIVE PALMER: Well, the only reason you’d have a debt levy is if you had a debt problem, and Australia is the third-lowest debt country in the OECD.

    We’re one of the 13 countries in the world that has a triple-A credit rating. So, unless we’re playing politics and this debt crisis is totally manufactured, it doesn’t justify putting a debt levy on it at all.]
    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s3999530.htm

  26. Dee

    If that was just a short grab of Shorten, it wouldn’t have done his full presser justice, from what I heard of it.

  27. Dee

    I was thinking the same thing this morning – I was pondering about Tanya Plibersek thinking how she would go as Leader.

  28. [Fran….As briefly pointed out the other evening, in Australia, the Gini index from 1982 rose more or less continuously through the period of the Hawke, Keating and Howard regimes with only minor fluctuations.]

    Fran, I’m glad you’ve taken an interest in the references cited. While I don’t think I mentioned the Gini index, it is well worth becoming familiar with it. What I did say is that the distribution of wages and salaries during the period of the Hawke Government needed to be considered against other factors, including the end of the Fraser/Howard recession, the decline in the terms of trade, the enactment of additional forms of social income and the introduction of the Super Guarantee System, all of which acted to improve workers’ incomes in absolute terms.

    It is also very notable that in the period following the reforms of the Hawke Government, in general incomes gravitated upwards from the median towards the mean – that is, more workers have higher average real incomes. Put another way, income distribution has flattened such that there are relatively fewer households on median incomes or less and relatively more households on medium and higher incomes.

    As well, the Gini index for the lowest quintile of households has actually improved in relation to all other quintiles, including the highest. This reflects the much greater availability of part-time and casual work, the abolition of poverty traps in the welfare system, the abolition of income taxes for those on low incomes, the improved availability of child care and the tight application of means testing of transfer payments.

    All these things act to improve the equality of households real disposable incomes – that is, to counter-act the inequality stemming from “market” inequality.

    The analysis here depicts relatively stable Gini Coefficients for Equivalised final income (final income adjusted for household size) across the years 1988 to 2010, when all forms of income are measured and compared (see page 18)….

    Market income
    Gross income (Includes transfers)
    Disposable Income (Includes direct transfers and tax)
    Final income (includes direct and indirect transfers and taxes)

    http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CFwQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pc.gov.au%2F__data%2Fassets%2Fpdf_file%2F0006%2F122496%2Fincome-distribution-trends.pdf&ei=i9tpU8GaLYzvkAXK24CAAw&usg=AFQjCNGtlvlk7XGVUV4M_ASxTisbwd-FjA&bvm=bv.66111022,d.dGI

    “The combined result of these changes is that there is no clear trend in measured gross household income inequality between 1988-89 and 2003-04. The Gini coefficient only increased slightly from 0.39 in 1988-89 to 0.40 in 2003-04. Since 2003-04, however, measured inequality rose — to 0.43 by 2009-10. The top-end growth in capital & other income is the main driver of the change between 2003-04 and 2009-10. But even with capital & other income included, both the level and the growth in household inequality is lower than that experienced by individuals — a result of the equalising effect of household members combining income, a greater proportion of household members working, as well as government payments targeting people on lower incomes.”(p 17)

    One other thing really stands out from the income stats and that is the share of household income contributed by self-employment has fallen by more than half in the last 25 years and, typically, incomes in these households are concentrated in the lowest quintiles.

    While none of this can be taken to suggest there is no inequality, it does argue that household incomes are less unequal than is sometimes made out. It also suggests that re-distributive mechanisms exist that – to borrow your phrase – do “threaten” the property of the “boss class”. These mechanisms not only exist. They work to deprive the highest paid of significant parts of their income and allocate towards those that have little or no capital at all.

    Finally, to return for a moment to the day’s point of embarkation – to blood-letting. You have implicitly attributed the blood-lust of the Nazis to its supposedly capitalist nature. There is no evidence to support the proposition that Nazism owed its origins or its power to capitalism; nor that it’s extreme violence – its love of violence even to the point of self-destruction – can be attributed to capitalism (however defined). It would make more sense to assert that Nazi violence over-powered those voices – liberal, democratic, socialist and communist – that were raised in opposition to racism, romanticism and nationalist depravity.

  29. [Mr Abbott denied accusations from his Liberal MPs, including Queenslander Teresa Gambaro, that the new tax would be a broken election promise.

    “I’m going to be able to look people in it eye on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning and beyond and say we are all in this together, we are all doing our bit,” he said.

    He says the budget will keep the Coalition’s commitments and be “fair”.

    “We will honour the commitment we gave to the Australian people pre-election to get the budget back under control, but we will do it in ways that are fair,” he said.]

    Propagandists with no shame.

  31. [Chris Berg from the IPA calls the budget a disastrous mess on the Drum]
    Any budget that doesn’t immediately cut spending by and taxes by 10% points is a “disastrous mess” according to the IPA.

  32. I pulled something in my back a couple of hours ago. Constant low level pain.

    Anyone got any suggestions? I MUST stay well to look after OH.

  33. Disaster Capitalism in Oz ______
    ________
    In 1931..in the depth of thee Depresssion…as the Scullin Labor Govt was collapsing,…the Bank of England sent it’s henceman..a banker named Otto Niemeyer from England to enforce a very harsh plan … know as the Premier’s Plan
    He said Australians lived too well
    The cuts were forced on the Labor Govt(which soon collapsed) and state Govts to.. to cut pensions.wages and super and suspend all sorts of services,even in public hospitals

    It split the Labor movement Only J T Lang in NSW defied the Plan and was later removed by the Governor of NSW
    It was a perfect exaample of disaster capitalism

    Lang was a fierce critic of Niemayer .whose Jewish background gave rise to many anti-Jewish-Banker statements within the Labor movement

  38. “@Simon_Cullen: Fed Police have received the Greens’ request for an investigation into asylum seeker ops. “It will be evaluated as per normal protocols””

  39. sohar

    JTI would approve. Years back he wrote one of his funniest blogs about his meeting , then minister in the Howard government, Kevin Andrews . In it he said meeting Kevin Andrews for 15 minutes will be the worst two weeks of your life.

  40. There are a number of parallels with Broko Haram and the Biafrans.

    Both are regional minorities, cum ethnic groups, that had been forced into what is essentially a Yoruba, Hausa, and Hausa-Fulani Empire by mischance of colonial borders.

    Both had/have significant religious differences with the central imperial groups.

    Both had/have views about the way in which Nigeria collects, allocates and/or distributes resource wealth. That is to say, both are ripped off by the big ethnic groups.

    When the christian Biafrans took to arms the western world was in full (moral) support.

    Now that it is islamic northern nigerians, the story is entirely different.

    The Biafrans killed around four times as many people as Broko Haram, the difference being that the Biafrans mostly killed military people. Broko Haram have killed around 10,000 people – mostly civilians. The Biafrans killed around 40,000 people – mostly military.

    I assume that we will shortly be hearing from Deblonay that this is exactly the Greek and Ukrainian story all over again.

  41. Dee
    [Shorten was flat and unconvincing]

    Reminds me of a Rowan Atkinson skit where lads on a night out in an Indian restaraunt were tripping over on the floor that was ‘deceptively flat and unimpeded’.

    He needs to improve… but he should be allowed time to.

    Are are the others being a little quiet or am I missing it? Albo, Bowen?

  45. Lizzie

    It wasn’t a few second grab. Shorten spoke of the lie and how Coalition ministers don’t support it but he sounded weak and almost at a loss for an angle.

  46. Lynchpin, MTBW

    Thanks, but can’t rest because nursing OH.
    Shall try heatpack and painkillers and veeery careful movement 🙂

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